The Moon's Reaching For Me
by AnOtterShambles
Summary: Set after the events of 5.05, Delia's more shaken than she lets on...


Later that evening Delia stood alone in her bedroom, curtains drawn against the pattering rain on the window. The bedside lamp filled the small room with a warm, low light, and the fresh vase of flowers on the chest of drawers glowed with a light, delicate scent. Delia closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath, letting the smell of the flowers fill her body as her fingers worked quickly at the buttons on her uniform. She let the dress fall to the floor and pool around her feet as she shakily released all the air in her chest and let her eyes drift open. Delia stood for a moment in her shift and stared at the dark-haired girl in the mirror opposite her. She swallowed hard, and shook her head roughly. The girl in the mirror did the same, then she bent down to pick up the uniform still lying in a heap on the floor. As Delia neatly folded it in half and draped it carefully over the chair-back in preparation for the morning, she noticed with some surprise that her fingers against the lilac cotton were perfectly still, without even a slight tremor to betray her still-racing heart.

A soft knock at the door made Delia jump, abruptly breaking her reverie. Trixie's voice floated through the door, her whisper low and conspiratorial.

"Delia! Are you decent? Or do you need a minute to put your teeth back in?"

Delia grinned. The was something irrepressibly mischievous in Trixie that delighted Delia, because it echoed the same impishness in her. She cast about for her dressing-gown and called back,

"I'm in my unmentionables, Trixie. So by all means do come in."

Muffled giggles from behind the door. Delia let herself enjoy for a moment the mental image of Patsy, ears flaming red to match her hair, giggling with the other girls out of nerves as much as humour. She really enjoyed teasing Patsy like this, engaging in the kind of racy banter that Trixie spoke so fluently, watching her rather proper girlfriend trying to hold it together. Their proximity at the convent and the amplified taboo of their relationship was difficult on both of them, of course it was – but there was a new air of danger about it too, that both scared and exhilarated Delia, and she suspected Patsy was also slightly turned on by the tightrope they were walking. So she rejoiced in double-entendre that flew over everyone else's head, in innocent comments calculated to spark something less-than-innocent in Patsy, in catching her eye at the right moment, in significant glances and lingering touches…

Of course, those games were innocent enough – both Delia and Patsy were too careful, too concerned for their work and livelihoods to risk anything more daring than a quick, chaste kiss if they knew there was another soul in the house. It hurt Delia more than she could say, to be so near to Patsy and so rarely able to show true affection for her—as if she had been biting her tongue for years.

Delia pulled the dressing-gown over her shoulders and opened the door. Trixie, Patsy, and Barbara trooped in, giggling and whispering in hushed voices, arms laden with bags of crisps, sweets, bottles of Tizer, and, produced with a flourish from under Patsy's pyjama top, an unopened bottle of white wine.

"Excuse me, what's this?"

Delia couldn't keep the smile from her cheeks, though she tried to sound disapproving.

"What are you all doing bringing contraband into my room in the dead of night?"

Trixie, resplendent in curlers and an egg-white face mask, rolled her eyes at her.

"It's a party, sweetie. For you! You're rather a hero around these parts." She busied herself setting out four glasses on the chest of drawers. She had somehow managed to produce and light a cigarette between crossing from the door to the far wall, and was now pouring two fizzing glasses of Tizer while smoke curled elegantly over her fingers.

"We thought, after the day you've had, that you deserved a bit of a celebration," Barbara chimed in earnestly, settling herself at the foot of the bed and laying out the crisps on the duvet beside her.

"Phyllis sends her apologies, but she booked tonight off ages ago for her Spanish class. She did contribute a bag of barley sugars to the festivities, however!" She brandished a pink-and-white striped paper bag in triumph. Delia was certain that the bulk of those sweets would be gone within twenty minutes with hardly a look-in from herself, Patsy or Trixie.

She looked around at Patsy, who gave her one of her heart-stopping smirks. Pats had quietly curled up to one side of Delia's pillow, and at the sight of her there Delia felt a momentary pang. If they had had their own flat, the sight of Patsy Mount sitting on her bed as if she belonged there would have been gloriously, beautifully mundane. The look Patsy gave her suggested that she was thinking the same thing, but she only held up the bottle in her hand and announced, "It's just us on the wine, Deels. You game?"

Delia grimaced as she sat back on the bed next to Patsy, their knees lightly touching. "What, lukewarm wine that's been under your pillow all day? Couldn't spring for some of Fred's potato vodka I suppose?"

"Be nice, or you'll be on the fizzy minerals with Babs and Trixie!"

"I've rather gone off wine, I'm afraid", Trixie declared, perching herself on the spare inch of duvet between Barbara and Patsy. "It must be my extreme old age. A nice ciggy and a Coca-Cola is my lot these days!"

"Oh, go on then, if it'll keep you happy..."

Delia watched in trepidation as Patsy half-filled a tumbler of wine for her, two glasses clasped precariously in her left hand and upending the bottle in her right, an unlit cigarette clamped between her lips. She took the glass closest to her, taking care to run her thumb along the line of Patsy's fingers in doing so. When all of them had a glass in hand, Patsy shifted onto her knees and knelt up on the now-groaning bed, smoothly transferring the still-unlit cigarette from her mouth to behind her right ear. Clearing her throat importantly, she addressed the gathered nurses;

"Ladies! Pray silence, for a toast. If you would raise your glasses to a most remarkable young woman. In many ways it's just as well she is not a qualified midwife – given what she did this afternoon with no training, I think it's safe to assume that if she were armed with even very basic midwifery skills we would all be out of a job pretty soon."

"Here here!" Trixie giggled, and beamed at Delia. Barbara grinned, and gave Delia's ankle a friendly squeeze.

"To Delia!"

"To Delia!" the other girls chorused, and they lifted their glasses and drank. When the wine hit Delia's throat, a spasm overtook her lungs and she gasped and coughed.

"Good God Pats, this stuff is like vinegar! Did you make it yourself, or what?"

"My hooch is of a much higher quality, believe me!" said Patsy, frowning into her glass. "Lord knows what's in it -" she coughed and choked with laughter, "but it's strong, that's for certain!"

"Well then, maybe bring your own next time."

"Here", Trixie passed over a bottle of Tizer, "this will help."

Delia tipped a generous measure of red fizz into her glass and Patsy's, and Trixie continued,

"I'm perfectly furious that I missed all the excitement. Though had I been here I suppose there wouldn't have been any need for Delia to step into the breach, so it's as well I had the day off. You must tell us everything!"

She took an expectant drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke over her shoulder, out of the corner of her mouth. Barbara turned her eyes to Delia, her mouth busy turning a barley sugar from cheek to cheek. Delia felt the colour rise in her neck and spread across her face, felt the same lurch in her stomach from before and wished for a moment that she was alone again – or with just Patsy. Patsy would understand.

She lifted a modest grin onto her face and took a nonchalant sip of her drink. The claggy sweetness of the Tizer furred her tongue and she hastily lowered the glass, not meeting any of their eyes as she said,

"There's very little to tell really – Mrs. Dawley was in accelerated labour and she was all alone. I just kept her calm, told her to sit back on her haunches, keep breathing, and be ready to catch the baby if he arrived before Nurse Crane got there."

She gave a shrug and reached for some crisps.

Barbara piped up, "But that wasn't the end of it! Phyllis told us that the baby didn't breathe by herself, and that you talked Mrs. Dawley through manual resuscitation without even seeing the baby! That's really something."

Delia's heart was banging in her chest and her ears were burning. She stared down into her glass as she replied, voice on the brink of cracking,

"That's basic first aid, and besides, neo-natal resuscitation is really hammered into us in our Obstetrics lectures. It would be more remarkable if I had managed to forget..."

She glanced up at Patsy, a pleading look in her eyes. Thankfully Patsy read the panic growing in her face and swiftly took over, with an ease born of years of steering conversations out of treacherous waters.

"Well, I'll just say that if there was a Cubs badge for saving the day you could teach it to the boys and give me a night off. Speaking of which, are we all on for _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ next Sunday? I'm absolutely dying to see it, I hear Audrey Hepburn is marvelous in it!"

"Oh, yes, absolutely!" Barbara's eyes were shining. "I went to see _Sabrina_ three times when I was in school, if she sings in the new one I think I shall just completely fall in love with her!"

Trixie and Barbara launched into an in-depth discussion of Audrey Hepburn's films, whether Humphrey Bogart or Gregory Peck was more handsome, and whether Audrey herself was an advocate of Keep Fit – Trixie fervently believing that she must surely be, but Barbara voicing the opinion that she was just naturally very thin, because hadn't she trained as a dancer before going into film? Under cover of their debate, Delia managed to slip her hand over Patsy's where it was lying on top of the duvet and give it a brief squeeze. Patsy glanced up to meet her eyes, and a soft look passed between them. Patsy returned the squeeze, her larger hands turning up to quickly grasp Delia's smaller palm then just as quickly releasing it, masking the movement by reaching for the Tizer to top up her glass.

After half an hour or so, Trixie yawned extravagantly and declared herself bound for bed.

"I'm on first call in the morning, and I wouldn't have thought it possible but Nurse Crane is even more tyrannical about punctuality than Sister Evangelina. Coming, Barbara?"

She nudged the younger girl, whose head was slumped onto Trixie's shoulder. She jerked awake, and allowed Trixie to bundle her, without protest, onto her feet and towards the door.

"Patsy?"

The redhead cocked her head and critically examined the bottle of wine on Delia's bedside cabinet. "I think I'll finish this off and help Deels tidy up first. You go ahead, I'm not on duty until clinic in the afternoon. I'll be as quiet as a mouse when I'm coming in."

Trixie nodded, and slung an arm around Barbara's waist. "Alright then, good night. And well done again, Delia -" she paused and smiled gently at Delia "- it was a lucky day when you moved in here." With another smile at Patsy, she and Barbara left, tiptoeing along the corridor to their respective beds.

When the door had clicked shut behind them, the room was filled once again with silence, broken only by the persistent drumming of the rain on the window. Patsy shifted so she was lying full-length on the bed, her body turned towards Delia's. The smaller woman copied her movements so they were lying facing one another across the duvet. Without a word, Patsy stretched out an arm and laid it across Delia's waist, her hand coming to rest just under her ribs. Softly, she whispered,

"I'm so proud of you."

Delia frowned, and looked up to meet Patsy's gaze. Her blue eyes were warm and shimmering.

"Don't be."

She had said it without thinking. She looked away from Patsy, who was now looking baffled and more than a bit concerned.

"I was so frightened. More than I have been since coming back to London, more than I have been since I woke up in hospital and I couldn't..."

She broke off. Patsy moved as though to speak, then thought better of it. She let the silence grow again, gave Delia time to marshal her thoughts. Her gaze traveled over the other woman's face, the face she knew better than her own, from the chicken-pox scar in her hairline down to the cluster of freckles under her chin. She watched the small furrow on her forehead deepen as she tried to get her thoughts in order, watched her deep-blue eyes flicker around and eventually settle on Patsy's lips. Patsy smiled inwardly – Delia loved her lips, and was often vocal in her praise of their softness, their warmth, their colour and shape, and even now when she was gathering her forces to express something difficult and complex, she was clearly entranced by Patsy's mouth. Slowly, careful not to move too suddenly, Patsy closed the gap between their faces with a kiss. After a minute, she pulled her head back and smiled at Delia. That seemed to have calmed her whirring mind, because Delia's body visibly relaxed and she heaved a deep, weary sigh.

"Tell me."

Patsy kept her voice low, so low it could have been mistaken for the hissing of the rain. She moved her hand from Delia's waist to find her hand, weaving their fingers together.

"I was only supposed to answer the telephone."

Delia's voice was small, and tired.

"I've only delivered one baby, in training, supervised by the ward matron, a senior midwife, and Mister Slade. When she started screaming, my mind went blank. It was all gone, all of it. I couldn't remember anything. I might as well have been the one screaming. I forgot everything."

"I saw Sister Monica Joan by the door, and all I could think of was you. I wanted you to be there so badly, I needed you to be there, taking charge and making everything alright."

Patsy's heart cracked at those words. She suddenly felt the fear that had coursed through Delia's veins, fear not only for herself but for the woman and baby at the other end. She pulled their joined hands up to her mouth and blindly kissed their knotted fingers.

"Sister Monica Joan ran off to get you, and I sort of pulled myself together. It came back to me then, what do say and what to do. Thank God it did. Thank God."

"Amen", Patsy thought. Aloud she said, still speaking low and gently,

"You did it, though. You didn't need me, or anyone else. You saved a woman and her baby, _you_ did that, darling, all by yourself. You're a wonderful nurse, Delia. And truly,"

She gently pulled Delia's chin upwards so that their eyes met,

"I never had a shadow of doubt but that you could handle it. When Sister Monica Joan came to fetch me, I came because you called for me, not because I thought you needed help."

Delia's eyes swam with tears.

"That's not the point though, is it? Yes, my training came back to me and I could talk a woman through delivering a baby, and helping her baby girl to breathe. But the point is, I lost it, even for a second. For a moment, I didn't know what to do, I was as frightened and helpless as she was. She could have lost the baby, and I could have lost her, I could have been responsible for two deaths today."

At last, the pressure of the day and the relief at unburdening herself washed over Delia and she dissolved into heaving, terrified sobs. Patsy pulled their bodies closer together and wrapped Delia's small body in her arms, where she curled up tight in a ragged, shaking bundle of grief. Patsy didn't speak, she simply held her fast and let her cry. Delia's hands gripped Patsy's arms, her strong fingers sinking into the muscles there as though trying to squeeze the life out of those fears which hung around her heart.

After a while, Delia's shoulders shook less violently, her breath came more easily, her grip on Patsy relaxed a little bit. But her voice when she spoke was swollen and bruised.

"My mother was right. I'm not ready to come back to work..."

"I could have killed them."

"No!"

At that, Patsy couldn't stay quiet. Her heart clenched and she unconsciously tightened her grip on Delia.

"Darling, you can't think that, you must never think that. This is the thing about midwifery – it's the stuff of life, yes, but it's the stuff of death as well. We all have shadows hanging over us of the babies who didn't make it..."

An image swam unbidden into her mind, of a yellow woolen booty, and a calypso dancer who would never wear it.

"...and we are trained to face them. We are trained to be the ones to shoulder that unbearable burden, we are taught to look them in the face and say, I'm sorry little one, I tried, I'm sorry. Life isn't always the strongest force out there."

Delia's face was blurred now, a veil of salt hiding her from Patsy, but she could tell from the rattle of her breathing that she was listening intently.

"What you did today was extraordinary. You were faced with the darkness and you simply strode through it. You saved two lives, not because you were trained to, but because you were stronger than your own fear. Today, _you_ were the stronger force. You, and you alone."

Patsy trailed off. Suddenly there were too many words on her tongue, none of them adequate to tell this woman, this remarkable, brave woman how proud she was to be by her her side, how fiercely she loved her, how dearly she wished that she could see herself as Patsy saw her, how she shone brighter than the stars…

The silence grew again around them, swallowing them in a deep, shimmering sphere of golden peace. Delia's head, cushioned on Patsy's heart, finally fell quiet, and her breathing slowed and deepened. The need for words had passed, and the only sounds in her ears were the calm tip-tap of the rain, and the strong, safe beating of her lover's heart. A kinder heart, more capable of love than any Delia had ever encountered.

"Will you stay?"

She said it without thinking, the words slipping out on their way to deep, starless sleep. She knew the answer before they had left her mouth. Patsy simply switched off the lamp, and in the velvet darkness reached for Delia and pressed a kiss to her lips. The kiss was as deep as the darkness, and Delia, emptied now of the twisting black vines of fear and guilt that had wrapped her lungs all day, breathed in the scent of flowers, the scent of Patsy, the nearness of her, the promise and safety of her kiss; and slept.


End file.
